Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movies, TV seasons and more we cram into our hyper-analytical sensoriums. Join the Patreon to help pick the items we’ll talk about in greater depth on a little podcast segment we like to call Tell Me More.

Recommended

The Great Killing (Film, Japan, Eiichi Kudo, 1964) Coup plotters hiding from an official purge plan a second attempt to prevent a ruthless rival from becoming the de facto ruler of Tokugawa Japan. Revisionist samurai film portrays struggles for power both figurative and physical as chaotic, confusing, and squalid.—RDL

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Film, US, Bob Persichetti et al., 2018) Teen under pressure Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) gets bitten by a high-tech spider and sees a hole blown in reality. High-energy romp zings around the tired origin story at its heart, as numerous guest Spider-Folk provide capability relief and up-beats. The animation amply swipes from Ditko, Romita, Kirby, and co. with love, similarly zinging around its sub-Pixar base look. –KH

Roma (Film, Mexico, Alfonso Cuarón, 2018) Shy maid (Yalitza Aparicio) to a doctor’s family fears the worst when her martial artist boyfriend gets her pregnant. Domestic slice-of-life drama opened up by an epic period backdrop. Adopts Italian Neorealism as its guide both in style and brutal manipulation. See this Netflix production on a big screen if you’re lucky enough to live near a venue that’s showing it.—RDL

Good

The Christmas Chronicles (Film, US, Clay Kaytis, 2018) Inquisitive Katie (Darby Camp) and her big brother Teddy (Judah Lewis) stow away on Santa’s sleigh, resulting in a wrecked sleigh, Santa Claus (Kurt Russell) without his bag of presents, and Christmas in danger. Netflix tries for the “family Christmas classic” film by swiping from many better films and letting Kurt Russell chew the scenery, which is not a terrible plan as plans go. A notable Christian subtext and plenty of zoomy CGI reindeer over Chicago help Kurt and Camp keep this one on both the Nice list and the Good list. –KH

The Keyhole (Film, US, Michael Curtiz, 1933) Charming socialite (Kay Francis) books cruise to Cuba to escape her blackmailing ex, shadowed by a suave private eye (George Brent) hired by her wealthy older husband. Noir plotline played as a glamorous romantic comedy, with all the best lines going to undersung character actor and classic Runyonesque mug Allen Jenkins.—RDL

Okay

Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 (Film, Shunya Itō, 1972) Vengeance-seeking inmate (Meiko Kaji) goes on the lam with a group of fellow prisoners. More hallucinatory and theatrical than its predecessor, but just as harsh and lurid, part two in the series turns its patriarchy-slaying lead into a numbed bystander.—RDL

The Haunting of Hill House (Television, US, Netflix, Mike Flanagan, 2018) Hugh Crain’s (Henry Thomas in 1991, Timothy Hutton in the present) decision to buy and flip the much-haunted Hill House in 1991 tests his family to destruction, culminating in the present day. Flanagan’s bravura cross-decade plotting and filming might have justified his perverse decision to flip Shirley Jackson’s Pinnacle novel into a conventional post-Amityville haunted house story until the asymptotically Ire-Inspiring last episode. –KH

Once again we close out the year with an episode recorded in front of a live audience at Dragonmeet in Hammersmith, London. Topics include the relationship between Queen Elizabeth and the Peloponnesian War, Cthulhoid Teletubbies, giant cows, modes of Yellow King RPG Game Mastering, and of course, sausages.

We’ll be back with our first episode of 2019 on January 4th. Until then, enjoy a safe and happy holiday!

Wish to introduce innocent children to the horror of the Mythos, while remaining on budget? Atlas Games is here to affordably twist young minds with a buy two, get one free deal on Ken’s Mini Mythos line of childrens’ book parodies: Where the Deep Ones Are, Goodnight Azathoth, Cliffourd the Big Red God, and Antarctic Express.

Ken’s latest roleplaying game, The Fall of Delta Green, is now available in print or PDF or both from Pelgrane Press. Journey to the head-spinning chaos of the late 1960s, back when everyone’s favorite anti-Cthulhu special ops agency hadn’t gone rogue yet, for this pulse-pounding GUMSHOE game of war, covert action, and Mythos horror.

Grab the translated riches of FENIX magazine in a special bundle deal from our friends at Askfageln, over at Indie Press Revolution. Score metric oodles of Ken Hite gaming goodness, a cornucopia of articles, complete games, plus the cartoon antics of Bernard the Barbarian. Warning: in English, not in Swedish. In English, not Swedish.

Just in time to save the world, though perhaps not your team of hardened covert agents, from the Mythos, the Delta Green Handlers Guide from Arc Dream Publishing is now in print and either at or headed to a game store near you. The slipcase print edition includes both the Handlers’ Guide and Agents’ Handbook, fitting snugly into your go bag along with your extra passports and list of weapons caches.

Recommended

The Athenian Murders (Fiction, José Carlos Somoza, 2000) When a killer stalks students at Plato’s Academy, they turn to Heracles Pontos, the Decipherer of Enigmas, to resolve the case — although the translator believes this supposedly ancient Greek novel holds a code, and that a killer stalks him … Works both as a mystery novel and as Nabokovian metafiction, which is surely all one can ask. –KH

Austin Osman Spare: The Life and Legend of London’s Lost Artist (Nonfiction, Phil Baker, 2011) Biography of the artist and occultist pierces layers of mythologizing, by its subject and others, revealing the hand-to-mouth life of an impoverished, working-class autodidact. In convincingly sorting truth from fancy, performs an act of Herculean and definitive proportions, while still leaving in the fun anecdotes.—RDL

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina Season 1 (Television, US, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, 2018) Half-mortal, half-witch (Kiernan Shipka) balances her affection for her human friends with the desire of the Dark Lord to enrol her in sorcery school. A great cast, led by the compelling Shipka, digs into the comic horror material with relish. Wisely sidesteps the meandering serialism of so many binge shows for the snappier pacing brought by clearly delineated episodes. It’s a telling moment in the culture wars when a show features multiple sympathetic comedy Satanists within a Dennis Wheatley/Jack Chick cosmology. –RDL

King Cohen: The Wild World of Filmmaker Larry Cohen (Film, US, Steve Mitchell, 2018) Wild anecdotes of shot-stealing guerrilla moviemaking take center stage in this clips & interviews career survey of the genre outsider responsible for such titles as It’s Alive, God Told Me To, and Q the Winged Serpent.—RDL

Primer (Film, US, Shane Carruth, 2004) Electronic engineers in their garage lab construct a time machine allowing them to jump a few hours into the future. Watching people perform complex procedures is weirdly absorbing on film; this micro-budget SF head-bender tests that by withholding any explanation of what we’re seeing that the characters wouldn’t make to one another.—RDL

Good

20,000 Years in Sing Sing (Film, US, Michael Curtiz, 1933) Hardboiled robber (Spencer Tracy) bonds with an honest warden, only to be put to the test when his girl (Bette Davis) is badly injured by a former confederate. Flat script gives Curtiz little to work with, with results noteworthy for the only pairing of its iconic stars and a sympathy for the criminal class that has long gone by the wayside.—RDL

Wish to introduce innocent children to the horror of the Mythos, while remaining on budget? Atlas Games is here to affordably twist young minds with a buy two, get one free deal on Ken’s Mini Mythos line of childrens’ book parodies: Where the Deep Ones Are, Goodnight Azathoth, Cliffourd the Big Red God, and Antarctic Express.

Ken’s latest roleplaying game, The Fall of Delta Green, is now available in print or PDF or both from Pelgrane Press. Journey to the head-spinning chaos of the late 1960s, back when everyone’s favorite anti-Cthulhu special ops agency hadn’t gone rogue yet, for this pulse-pounding GUMSHOE game of war, covert action, and Mythos horror.

Grab the translated riches of FENIX magazine in a special bundle deal from our friends at Askfageln, over at Indie Press Revolution. Score metric oodles of Ken Hite gaming goodness, a cornucopia of articles, complete games, plus the cartoon antics of Bernard the Barbarian. Warning: in English, not in Swedish. In English, not Swedish.

Just in time to save the world, though perhaps not your team of hardened covert agents, from the Mythos, the Delta Green Handlers Guide from Arc Dream Publishing is now in print and either at or headed to a game store near you. The slipcase print edition includes both the Handlers’ Guide and Agents’ Handbook, fitting snugly into your go bag along with your extra passports and list of weapons caches.

Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movies, TV seasons and more we cram into our hyper-analytical sensoriums. Join the Patreon to help pick the items we’ll talk about in greater depth on a little podcast segment we like to call Tell Me More.

Recommended

The Good Place Season 3 (Television, US, Michael Schur, NBC, 2018) The breathless pacing of this premise-threat-philosophy-class comedy slows down a bit for time travel, life interventions, and making fun of Australia before resuming its roller-coaster switchbackery once Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell) and friends again become interdimensional fugitives. –KH

The Good Place Season 3 (Television, US, Michael Schur, NBC, 2018) Michael (Ted Danson) breaks the cosmic rules to bring Eleanor and company back to life on Earth for a second shot at redemption. This season not only shifts the show’s premise yet again, but switches protagonists, moving Michael and Janet (D’arcy Carden) to the forefront and pushing Kristen Bell as Eleanor into the ensemble.—RDL

Killing Eve Season 1 (Television, UK, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, BBC America, 2018) Intelligence analyst (Sandra Oh) steps into the field in pursuit of an emotionally arrested, psychopathic assassin (Jodie Comer.) Semi-comic espionage thriller pits a grounded protagonist against a cartoonish antagonist. It’s hard to see how the premise sustains itself through an entire series, but that’s a problem for next year, I guess.—RDL

Let the Sunshine In (Film, France, Claire Denis, 2017) Emotionally unmoored artist (Juliette Binoche) careens through a series of unstable romantic relationships. Powerfully performed character study recalls Rohmer, but with intense feeling taking the place of Olympian detachment.—RDL

Good

The Irregular: A Different Class of Spy (Fiction, H.B. Lyle, 2017) What ever happened to Wiggins, the street-urchin head of Sherlock Holmes’ Baker Street Irregulars? According to Lyle’s novel, he became the first-ever agent of the British Secret Service in 1909, facing off against the historical anarchist Peter the Painter and other shadowy threats to the Empire. Far from flawlessly executed, but a fun thriller nonetheless. –KH

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Season 1 (Television, US, Netflix, Amy Sherman-Palladino, 2017) When her husband ditches her for his shiksa secretary, achievement-obsessed Midge Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan) takes over his stand-up comedy dream. Glorious dive into late 50s New York style falters only during the stand-up scenes, where the otherwise perfectly executed old-school presentational acting style precludes the comic timing that would have worked then, or now.—RDL

Not to spoil anything, but we open in the Gaming Hut as Patreon backer V Weather asks us what to do when it turns out you’ve already read the adventure your GM is running.

In How To Write Good, we examine the uses and abuses of ambiguity in RPG setting materials.

Then it’s off to the Tradecraft Hut, where earlier we promised a segment based on a random page from Christopher Andrew’s The Secret World: A History of Intelligence. The number generator has assigned Ken page 227, which means we’re talking about Cromwell’s spies.

Then our Belle Epoque occultism series again jaunts into the Eliptony Hut for a visit with astronomer, parapsychologist, spiritist and science fiction writer Camille Flammarion.

If you dig clever, take-that game play and/or ironic Soviet robots, Atlas Games’ new card game Cogs and Commissars was made for you. Buy it at a brick-and-mortar game store and send a selfie to Atlas, to get a special Neon Botsky promo card.

Ken’s latest roleplaying game, The Fall of Delta Green, is now available in print or PDF or both from Pelgrane Press. Journey to the head-spinning chaos of the late 1960s, back when everyone’s favorite anti-Cthulhu special ops agency hadn’t gone rogue yet, for this pulse-pounding GUMSHOE game of war, covert action, and Mythos horror.

Grab the translated riches of FENIX magazine in a special bundle deal from our friends at Askfageln, over at Indie Press Revolution. Score metric oodles of Ken Hite gaming goodness, a cornucopia of articles, complete games, plus the cartoon antics of Bernard the Barbarian. Warning: in English, not in Swedish. In English, not Swedish.

Just in time to save the world, though perhaps not your team of hardened covert agents, from the Mythos, the Delta Green Handlers Guide from Arc Dream Publishing is now in print and either at or headed to a game store near you. The slipcase print edition includes both the Handlers’ Guide and Agents’ Handbook, fitting snugly into your go bag along with your extra passports and list of weapons caches.

Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movies, TV seasons and more we cram into our hyper-analytical sensoriums. Join the Patreon to help pick the items we’ll talk about in greater depth on a little podcast segment we like to call Tell Me More.

Recommended

Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis (Nonfiction, Kingsley Amis, 2009) This omnibus collects three Amis books on (mostly) spirits, the first two being themselves collections of essays and newspaper columns written between 1971 and 1984. Thus some repetition sets in, but Amis’ superb wordsmithing, charm, and jovial curmudgeonry keep you at the party. The last book is a long quiz, best considered as the “top with soda” portion of the cocktail. –KH

Today We Live (Film, US, Howard Hawks, 1933) Believing that her American bomber pilot beau (Gary Cooper) is dead, a British ambulance driver in WWI (Joan Crawford) marries a childhood friend (Robert Young), now serving on a torpedo boat. Wartime melodrama features gripping naval and aerial combat sequences and the group bonds and suppressed emotions synonymous with Hawks.—RDL

Vengeance (Film, Hong Kong/France, Johnnie To, 2009) When Triads kill his daughter’s family in Macau, former assassin Costello (a glacial-eyed Johnny Hallyday, playing Alain Delon) recruits a team of hit men (Anthony Wong, Lam Suet, Lam Ka-Tung) to hit them back. The first two acts run in a predictable rut, but halfway through To lights the afterburner and sends the film to the moon — or rather to a junkyard for a mindblowing shootout, and lands a stunning final act worthy of Sergio Leone. –KH

Walking With Cthulhu (Nonfiction, David Haden, 2011) The subtitle of this collection of essays says it all: “H.P. Lovecraft as Psychogeographer, New York 1924-1926.” Haden points out that Lovecraft’s habitual all-night walks prefigure the Surrealist flaneur and the Situationist dérive, and finds a productive new way to look at HPL’s art. He also finds a possible inspiration for R’lyeh in a forgotten Garrett Serviss novel, and intensively annotates “Nyarlathotep,” so step right up. –KH

Good

Craig Ferguson: Tickle Fight (Stand-up, US, Netflix, Craig Ferguson, 2017) Ferguson ambles through a lot of half-stories and engaging blather on the way to one disappointing joke: in short, classic Ferguson monologue but for an hour. Some of the stories gleam as perfect anecdotes, and some just let him mug engagingly. If you miss, miss, miss, miss Craig on the Late Late Show (as do all right-thinking people) it’s Recommended, but just because that hit feels so good. –KH